US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1512

On May 31 2019 02:49 ShambhalaWar wrote:


It is bullshit. It's a lie.

If you want to say "I GH think it's bullshit." You're entitled to that opinion.

To say "they have no functional plans." is a lie. Period.

Don't spread lies.

All the plans I've listed are functional plans that democrats are pushing. There are many more that would better the US, that don't get any spotlight.

I'm not a fan of capitalism either.

You're entitled to your opinions, not your facts.

On May 31 2019 03:18 GreenHorizons wrote:


The most important part of that is



You can call them functional, but then you have to account for massive climate collapse, mass extinction, and the existential threat to humanity and so on as part of that function.

On May 31 2019 04:10 GreenHorizons wrote:


I've been ignoring you for reasons I've explained before but I need this to stop being repeated because it's fundamentally fails to recognize the argument at hand preventing any potential for dialogue.

People can argue some capitalist "hybrid" is the best they can come up with, but there is absolutely nothing about any other solutions upon which the threat we face is contingent.

Even if my solution climate collapse was to piss into the wind to replace air conditioning, the threat we currently face remains the same. If folks want to defend/argue for a reformed status quo "socialist"-capitalism they have to address the contradiction of it being "functional" and also leading us headlong into climate collapse.

Alternatively they can do what you guys have been doing but it's a dead end for everyone.

On May 31 2019 04:11 JimmiC wrote:


But you are not doing anything. Ranting about a solution you don't understand how it will work is not doing anything.

If anything you are pushing people away from your preferred solution.

On May 31 2019 04:17 GreenHorizons wrote:


This is my point. Even if you were right (you're not imo), I don't have to have a solution to point out the alternative being presented by Democrats leads to massive casualties, mass displacement, mass extinctions, and threatens humanity as a species.

That argument can stand completely on it's own.



If my solution is the right one and they refuse it because some guy on a forum hurt their feelings that's on their own petty, not me.

On May 31 2019 04:22 IyMoon wrote:


So your plan is to yell at everyone with nothing else to offer and expect them to come to your side?
Good plan

On May 31 2019 02:20 Nebuchad wrote:


I think you shifted the meaning of capitalist from "member of the capitalist class" to "person who supports capitalism" and that's how you got that impression that I was attacking you. What I described was the thought process that would lead someone that owns the means of production in a coal or a petroleum company to fight climate change science without being irrational or short-sighted. I believe that it's totally rational for them to do this based on the framework of capitalism, and that's what I'm trying to show. I do think that when people talk about what they have to lose in a fight against capitalism, that certainly comes from a position of privilege, but that's something I can only attack from a moral standpoint, not a rational standpoint, so I won't be using this.

This conversation is interesting because of the type of progress that we're making. For example, I gave you an answer on why socialism is an improvement on capitalism when it comes to climate change, and you've decided to completely ignore that and continue to pretend that I'm saying "socialism, how does it solve the problems? Socialism". So there's no progress there. On the other side, you're now clearly standing in support of capitalism and against socialism, so hopefully there's progress there, and next time we have this conversation we won't have to deal with the period where you pretend that you like socialism but you just need a clear picture of how it's going to be implemented.

The way you are using moral character of humans is interesting and shows quite a bit of projection I believe. Nothing I've said demonstrates that I believe the character of humans changes between economic systems, that's something that you appear to have just made up. Oppositely, your reaction of "If you think people are that callous and self-interested" when defending capitalists is something that stands in stark contrast with your attacks on state ownership, that generally involve talking about human corruption and self-interest. If there is an inconsistency there, I think it's on your part of the argument.

I... really don't care about the USSR? I'm not a tankie? They went for a state ownership system and I don't think that's a good idea? The idea of state ownership is justified as a transitory state before we give the means of production to the workers, and they... never did that in 70 years (I believe they actively fought against it)? People in the USSR made sure that people read Marx as seldom as possible so that they wouldn't notice that the party line looked nothing like what Marx was saying?

Like, I could also look at Pol Pot, he thought that the good way to go about communism was to go full nazbol, so he went with state ownership (with peasantry as the vanguard, as it's the maoist system) plus a whole lot of nationalism! That's... the horseshoe theory, surprisingly, and guess what it didn't work either. But I don't want to do that shit, so what would it bring me to know how it failed?

I gave you a bunch of answers to the questions that you purportedly have. It's up to you what you do with them.

No, I'm personally not a great example when it comes to climate. I'm not the worst but I don't make particularly large efforts, I use a car when I need it which is about once or twice a week, I take a plane to Vegas every year... I can't even bring myself to become a vegan even though I have no rational argument to oppose veganism. But I do take solace in my ability to recognize that climate change is a systemic problem and it necessitates a systemic solution, that's at least something I've got over the most climate-conscious liberal.

But I do take solace in my ability to recognize that climate change is a systemic problem and it necessitates a systemic solution, that's at least something I've got over the most climate-conscious liberal.

I... really don't care about the USSR?

On the other side, you're now clearly standing in support of capitalism and against socialism,

On May 31 2019 03:59 JimmiC wrote:


You keep saying this but you have still yet to answer, How does your revolution stop this?

designed to be practical and useful, rather than attractive

On May 31 2019 04:25 GreenHorizons wrote:


No, step one is getting them to acknowledge the threat and that the "solutions" that they have are inadequate to stave of an existential threat to humanity.

Once they do that it's kinda natural to want to work on real solutions together.

On May 31 2019 04:10 GreenHorizons wrote:


I've been ignoring you for reasons I've explained before but I need this to stop being repeated because it's fundamentally fails to recognize the argument at hand preventing any potential for dialogue.

People can argue some capitalist "hybrid" is the best they can come up with, but there is absolutely nothing about any other solutions upon which the threat we face is contingent.

Even if my solution climate collapse was to piss into the wind to replace air conditioning, the threat we currently face remains the same. If folks want to defend/argue for a reformed status quo "socialist"-capitalism they have to address the contradiction of it being "functional" and also leading us headlong into climate collapse.

Alternatively they can do what you guys have been doing but it's a dead end for everyone.



this is the meaning I'm using. Reforming capitalism is attractive (to you capitalists), socialism is practical and useful.

Capitalism is also practical and useful, however, one of it's functions, or consequences has been/is rapidly accelerating existential threat to humanity.

That's the contradiction that must be reconciled in order to maintain a coherent worldview.

On May 31 2019 04:31 IyMoon wrote:


So you're going to yell at people until they realize they are wrong? Have you met people? Do you think that will work? You can't get people to vaccinate their fucking kids in this country

On May 31 2019 04:51 ShambhalaWar wrote:


The inherent problem with your original statement I was addressing was that it was sloppily made and it was also a giant umbrella statement painting with massive broad strokes over the entire Democratic party.

If you want to make arguments for different political ideologies than you need to include that in your statement. In the comment material your referenced, there is no mention of capitalism, nor is their mention prior to this statement, yet it magically finds it's way into our discussion now.

You're original statement was poorly form and factually a lie. Nothing about that statement is true unless you start adding material to it, which you are now trying to do.

Your statement:

"Because they don't have functional solutions, just rhetoric on doing better than Republicans which is a bar so low that just disappearing and preventing someone from replacing them would put them comfortably above it imo. "

By your statement you said Democrats don't have "functional" solutions. By your definition of functional (designed to be practical and useful, rather than attractive)... They 100% do have functional solutions that meet that criteria.

Again, use google, you will find these policies.

Don't spread lies.

Your original statement was 100% a lie even by the definition we agree upon.

On May 31 2019 04:37 Nebuchad wrote:


A lot of this answer is you refusing to engage with arguments that have been provided to you. On climate change, you think I want to do nothing because change is uncomfortable, when I'm actually proposing systemic change to fix a systemic problem, and it is you who is uncomfortable with that and instead want to limit yourself to individual change because that's a level of change you are comfortable with, regardless of the efficiency or realism of either of these ideas.

On the USSR, you think I want a similar system and it's close to the deep state, when I repeatedly distinguished between state ownership of the means of production and worker ownership of the means of production. It is impossible to follow an argument that starts with "we should have an increased level of democracy" and conclude "That sounds too much like the Deep State for my liking", clearly there is some prejudice going on here.

The notion that active and violent opposition from a powerful economic system is not a tangible reason for failure is ridiculous.

We live in the First World my friend. All of our lifestyles are pretty good from a % standpoint. I make money from poker, so Vegas has been most of the time a source of income rather than a vacation. Not that it would change anything otherwise.

Closing thoughts on propaganda. Here is a recent example of leftist propaganda that I fell for: there were polls on Biden and Sanders that showed Biden was in the lead with a large margin. But if you looked at the methodology of these polls, you saw that they had a bunch of "N/A" in the 19-45 demographics. Some leftist news source that I watch and generally trust argued that those polls were bullshit because, while N/A doesn't mean "nobody in the demographic was polled", the sample was so small that it can't be considered representative, and therefore the poll result is skewed. That made sense to me and I didn't doubt them, so I thought that was the truth. It turns out it's more complicated than that, because when pollsters don't have enough people representing a demographic, they extrapolate from the numbers they have and pretend that they got more than they did. It's still not a perfect representation, of course, because if you interrogate 50 25 years-old and 8 of them are for Biden, you can't logically conclude that if you had interrogated 500, then 80 of them would be for Biden. But it's still a better estimate than the picture I had because of the news source I watched.

Do you know how I can tell that this is propaganda? Because there is a reality. Facts exist. So I can compare what I've been told with the facts, and see that this doesn't match. That's helpful that way. Hey, here's one for you: what's the last example of you falling for liberal propaganda that you remember?

no operable way to reform capitalism in a way to prevent that I need to open myself up to this "socialism" thing

On May 31 2019 05:26 Nebuchad wrote:


Well the USSR was a terrible guess based on the information you had. You could also have relied on this conversation we're in the middle of, where I regularly argue against the USSR system.

I misunderstood you on the deep state, I apologize. If we go on wiki: "some analysts believe that there is "a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process"". The problem with the deep state formulation is the "hybrid association" part. It fails in that it presents this as a conspiracy of people in shadowy rooms, often jewish because why not, rather than an extremely logical consequence of how the capitalist system is built. People who have more money have more power than people who have less money, so they are capable of influencing policy better than people who don't have money if they choose to do so. As a result, over time, policy is likely to reflect the will of the people with more money and influence. To counteract that, we have fought for this system called democracy, where we get to influence policy regardless of how much money or how much influence we have. This is sometimes effective and sometimes not: there is a tension there. In the US nowadays, it is almost always ineffective, which is exemplified in how rarely the will of the people has an influence on policy.